Trump administration says it will withhold disaster funding to states boycotting Israel
US states and territories that boycott Israeli companies or those operating in Israel will be denied federal funds for natural disaster preparation, Reuters reported on Monday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) announced on Friday it was making nearly $1bn available to states to protect themselves from natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and fires, as well as terrorist attacks and cyber disruptions.
This $1bn allocation, which will apply to 15 different grant programmes, is part of the "Notices of Funding Opportunity amounting to more than $2.2 billion available to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to help them protect American citizens", Fema states on its website.
However, Reuters said at least $1.9bn of this funding was conditional on states following Department of Homeland Security conditions laid out in April, saying states will not cut “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or companies doing business in or with Israel” to qualify, according to 11 agency grant notices it reviewed.
But the ruling is seen as largely symbolic. More than 30 US states already have laws that require “public entities to certify they do not and will not boycott Israel”, according to an essay titled "Anti-BDS laws and the politics of political boycotts" in the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Law and Social Change.
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In recent months, calls for boycotts of Israeli and international companies that are doing business with Israel have increased. Recently, UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese called for action after publishing a scathing report in which she names over 60 companies, including major technology firms like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, alleging their involvement in what she calls "the transformation of Israel's economy of occupation to an economy of genocide".
Albanese was sanctioned by the US after she published the report.
It is the latest escalation of the Trump administration creating pushback on institutions, departments or states that do not fall in line with its goals and priorities, such as its hardline approach to immigration or issues such as climate change.
For example, Fema’s statement on Friday laid out that recipients will no longer be able to spend the funds “to house illegal immigrants at luxury hotels, fund climate change pet projects or empower radical organizations with unseemly ties that don’t serve the interest of the American people”.
The statement also said that recipients are required to spend at least 10 percent on “supporting border crisis response and enforcement”.
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